Urgent action needed to protect medical care conscience clauses

The most important thing I can do with my column this week is share with Colorado Catholics the following urgent analysis by the National Committee for a Human Life Amendment:

“The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is inviting public comment on a proposal to rescind an important December 2008 federal regulation. The 2008 regulation implements and enforces three federal laws protecting the conscience rights of health care providers, especially those at risk of being discriminated against because of their moral or religious objection to abortion …

“As they did when the conscience regulation was first proposed, pro-abortion groups are again trying to flood HHS with comments attacking conscience rights. Their chief message: Rescind the regulation because conscience clauses (which they call ‘refusal’ or ‘denial’ clauses) interfere with women’s ‘access’ to health care. These groups want to force doctors, nurses and hospitals to violate their consciences or leave the profession. The Catholic community and others must speak out so this will not happen.   [The key] points:

“• Religious liberty and freedom of conscience have been building blocks of our society since its founding. We respect conscientious objection for those opposed to war, physicians opposed to taking part in capital punishment, and others who object to involvement in the taking of life. We can do no less in the context of abortion.

“• Conscience protection does not threaten access to health care. Allowing health care providers to serve the public without violating their consciences protects and enhances access to health care, by ensuring continued participation by some of our most dedicated health professionals. Catholic and other faith-based providers are specially called to serve the poorest and most vulnerable, from the inner city to remote rural areas—if they are driven away, who will replace them?

“• Abortion, in particular, cannot be seen as ‘standard’ health care. Most physicians, nurses and hospitals choose not to provide abortion, and the Hippocratic Oath that established medicine as a profession has rejected abortion for many centuries. Forcing health professionals to be involved in abortion against their will shows a distorted sense of priorities—one that will irreparably damage the healing professions and undermine efforts to work together for health care reform.”

Catholic health care has played a hugely valuable role in serving the American public for generations.  Catholic doctors and nurses have served their profession and their patients with extraordinary distinction.  The whole point of “Catholic” medical care, of course, is that it’s done because of the Gospel and is offered in a manner consistent with the moral beliefs the Catholic community holds about the dignity of the human person.  If Catholic medical care were forced to violate its own moral identity, it would cease to exist.

Yet that seems to be exactly the goal of the current administration’s proposed repeal of medical care conscience regulations.  Despite all the pious propaganda by abortion supporters about “choice” and “conscience” when it suits their purposes, they’re very happy to violate the consciences of those who disagree with them—in this case, Catholic medical care providers and professionals.  Underneath the public relations veneer, the “abortion-rights” lobby is not about tolerance.  It’s about intolerance and coercion.  For the so-called “pro-choice” movement, it isn’t enough, and it will never be enough, that abortion is legal.  Abortion must also be forcibly affirmed—especially at the expense of people of character who regard it as gravely wrong.  And nobody should be surprised.  Evil is always big on tolerance until it gets the upper hand.

Catholic doctors, nurses and medical facility staff urgently need to speak out publicly against the proposed regulation repeal.  But this is really a matter that concerns the whole Catholic community.  The United States was founded on religious and moral freedom.  A false “right” to abortion does not trump that freedom.  We all need to understand the gravity of this issue, and act on it now.

ACTION ALERT

Readers are urged to contact the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services by close of business April 9 to oppose rescinding conscience clause rights. Send e-mail to: proposedrescission@hhs.gov. Mail comments (one original and two copies) to: Office of Public Health and Science, Department of Health and Human Services, Attn: Rescission Proposal Comments, Hubert H. Humphrey Building, 200 Independence Ave., SW, Room 716G, Washington, D.C.  20201.